


Sue God, Then We'll Talk

by phonecallfromgod



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blackmail, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Manipulation, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Possessive Behavior, Possibly Unrequited Love, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:20:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29989662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phonecallfromgod/pseuds/phonecallfromgod
Summary: Eduardo is the guy who wants to help.
Relationships: Divya Narendra/Cameron Winklevoss, Eduardo Saverin/Mark Zuckerberg
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16
Collections: The Prompt Network





	Sue God, Then We'll Talk

**Author's Note:**

> Written for The Prompt Network Round 3 for perhaps the loosest possible reading of the prompt 'Housework'.

Cameron Winklevoss was stunningly punctual, stepping through the door of their pre-arranged meeting place, a student-favourite cafe that touched the edge of campus, just as the clock ticked over from 12:59 to 1:00. It was a Thursday afternoon and the cafe was filled with students with notebooks and pens fanned out in front of them, bottomless cups of coffee just ready to be carelessly jostled onto an entire semester’s worth of notes. 

“Eduardo,” Cameron Winklevoss said, extending a hand. “Thank you so much for reaching out to me, I’m glad to be having a civilized meeting about all of this.”

Eduardo smiled and squeezed firmly into the handshake. “Happy to get everyone on the same page.” 

Two days after the Cease & Desist—two days after Eduardo was pressed against the unyielding, unsanitary wall of the bathroom stall with Christy’s mouth around him and Mark’s voice in his ears—Eduardo was pulled into an emergency meeting with the upper echelons of the Phoenix. 

“The situation is this,” Jameson said. “There’s a lot of bad blood with the Porc right now over this whole ordeal with The Facebook.” 

“I’m handling it,” Eduardo said. 

“I’m sure you are, but in the meantime we felt it was in our best interest to extend an olive branch so to speak—” 

“—While of course still backing you and your team,” Rodgers, always the diplomat, interjected. “We’re sure you’re in the right, but keeping the connection open with the Porcellian is beneficial for everyone. We pass out an invitation for our next event, you and the Winklevosses play nice, everyone walks away happy.” 

“I’m sure that can be arranged.” 

In the corner Arden snorted but didn’t contribute. 

He caught Eduardo by the elbow later, “You know it’s everyone scrambling all over themselves to bend over for the Porc that makes them think they’re better than us in the first place. They can fuck right off with this bullshit, they’re just mad they bet on the wrong horse. Or well, horses I suppose.” 

Eduardo ran his tongue along the sharp top edge of his molars. “What do you know about them? The twins.”

“New money, obviously. Not big drinkers. Not big on parties in general. I’d be surprised if they even show.” 

“Anything else?” Eduardo prompted. 

“Well…” Arden drawled. 

“Well?” 

“You didn’t hear it from me but. Uh. It’s a pretty open secret that neither of them ever brings a date to a luncheon, never takes a girl home. But they do tend to bring their little friend around, the reporter.

“Divya Narendra?” Eduardo had spent an afternoon doing follow up research, not content to rest his future on the backs of Mark and a 3L student. Divya Narendra’s corpus at the Crimson was varied, but he did seem comfortable covering topics both directly and indirectly linked to Final Clubs. 

“It could just be business,” Arden shrugged, “Or. It could be mixing business with pleasure, you see what I’m saying?” 

Eduardo did. 

“Which one?” 

“Either. Both. Does it matter?” 

“It might,” Eduardo said, and as it turned out, it had. 

The specifics on how Eduardo acquired video footage of one of the security cameras which shot into the small VIP parking area outside the Phoenix S.K. clubhouse were not particularly important. 

What was important, however, was that this specific video footage from 00:33 to 01:01 on the night of March 13th, 2004 shot surprisingly clearly into the backseat of a White 2003 Lexus GX registered to one Cameron Howard Winklevoss.

Eduardo had expected a larger reaction from Cameron, but he just stared helplessly as he watched the video play at triple speed on Eduardo’s laptop. Eyes widening in horrified recognition. 

Eduardo didn’t need to see the video to know what was happening. He had looped it back dozens of times over, still disbelieving his own good fortune in having practically stumbled into a gold mine. The footage was slightly grainy and shot in black and white, but it was clear enough to see every time someone sat up or readjusted in the backseat, including a perfect shot of Divya sitting up to pull his jacket and shirt off, painting a clear enough picture of what was happening when they disappeared from view. 

“Oh god,” Cameron choked out finally, almost involuntarily, half closing the lid and shoving Eduardo’s laptop away from him. 

“You’re going to miss the best part,” Eduardo said calmly, pulling his computer back and sliding along the bottom until he found the timestamp he’d practically memorized and tilting the screen back towards Cameron so he could watch himself retrieve a pack of—Tissues? Wipes?—from the glove compartment and hand them to Divya who was sitting in the open doorway of his backseat. 

Eduardo leaned in. “I can only imagine what a discerning member of the Harvard community like Divya Narendra must be getting out of this arrangement if he’s willing to let a member of the Porcellian cum on his face.” 

The clatter of his chair falling as Cameron gagged and fled to the bathroom was the second most satisfying noise Eduardo had ever heard. 

Eduardo was not in love with Mark Zuckerberg. 

He certainly wouldn’t be after coming around to Kirkland a week after FaceMash—a week after the Erica breakup—and seeing Mark watching porn on his laptop with the steely intense focus of a brain surgeon. 

“Hello,” Eduardo said, “Am I interrupting.” 

“Not really,” Mark said, and shoved over on the couch so Eduardo could get a better view of the facefucking. 

_“You’re taking that so good, yeah you love it don’t you?”_

“Do you think girls actually like that shit?” Mark said. 

“I guess probably, you know, statistically, some of them do,” Eduardo said. “Is this about Erica?”

“How are you supposed to even _say_ something like that to a girl,” Mark huffed, rewinding back. 

_“You’re taking that so good, yeah you love it don’t you?”_

Eduardo couldn’t remember anymore how that conversation had even ended, if Chris or Dustin or Billy had come home, maybe they’d gone to get food at the dining hall, or did they have an AEPi event? He doesn’t remember. 

It hadn’t mattered though, when Eduardo was pinned against the stall wall with Christy on her knees, looking up at him with huge expectant eyes, like she knew exactly what she was doing, Mark behind and to his left making increasingly frustrated little keening noises. 

_“What’s wrong? Is that okay?”_ Alice whispered. 

_“It’s fine, it’s fine, keep going,”_ Mark said. 

“God,” Eduardo said, rubbing a hand against Christy’s cheek, “You’re taking that so good. You love that, don’t you?” 

She moaned around him and Mark groaned sharply behind him and everything tilted away from him, unravelling in one perfect moment as he shook into orgasm. 

Eduardo might not love Mark, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t exquisitely skilled at giving Mark what he needed. 

It took five minutes, almost exactly, for Cameron to reemerge from the bathroom, and Eduardo wondered if he gave himself a time limit. 

He looked like shit, eyes red and weepy, shoulders folding into themselves even before he resettled himself in the seat across from Eduardo. 

“I’m not a bad guy,” Eduardo said very measuredly. “I really don’t have a problem if you want to roger the entire staff of the Crimson in the backseat of your car, Cameron, that’s not what this is.”

“Yeah you’re a goddamn saint.” 

“I haven’t shown this to anyone in the Phoenix. Or the Porcellian. Or Mark. Your brother, your father, Divya, none of them have seen this. I have been reasonably charitable. You were stupid, someone caught you, now you have to pay your tab.” 

Cameron’s mouth puckered angrily. “Which is what? Dropping legal action against your website?”

Well nice to know that even celebrated Varsity Athletes need to pass _some_ academic bar to get into Harvard. 

“Exactly.” 

Cameron huffed a humourless laugh and sucked his bottom lip into his mouth ruefully, “You really don’t know Divya and my brother if you think me being an obstructionist is going to work very well or act as _any_ kind of permanent solution.” 

Eduardo shrugged, “It’s not really my job to figure that out.” 

“Fuck,” Cameron said into the steeple of his hands, “godamn fucking shit.” 

“I mean hey, good lawyers like your father’s house counsel, I’m sure you could get off with a fine and a slap on the wrist for indecent exposure. The Porcellian will be scandalized, but who cares? So what, they kick out you and your brother. The Crimson won’t let Divya cover Final Clubs anymore, but that’s spilt milk. You’re all graduating this year.”

Eduardo lets it settle for a moment and then rolls his shoulders, “Honestly, if it weren’t for the Olympics you could really just bite the bullet and tell me to fuck off. Lots of stupid college guys do much worse things than this, and with much fewer resources at their disposal.” 

“Do you really think it’s _me_ I’m worried about,” Cameron said sharply. “Let me—let me watch the video again.” 

Eduardo obliged, pulling his laptop back out of his bag and setting up the video for Cameron on double-speed (slower than before, so he could really savour it), and watched for almost fifteen minutes as Cameron’s eyes focused blankly on the screen. He put his forearms up to bracket the computer like blinders on a horse. 

Eduardo wondered if Cameron would even bother staying in touch with Divya long enough to know what opportunities something like this being leaked might endanger. But he wasn’t about to argue with someone on the verge of giving him exactly what he wanted. 

“I want terms in writing,” was all Cameron said when he was done, and then left as soon as Eduardo agreed something tangible could be arranged. Carefully, of course, he wasn’t about to hand over anything too incriminating. 

He left the meeting in high spirits, and when Mark asked him what he was in such a good mood about Eduardo shrugged and said, “You did a good job getting the Winklevoss twins off our back. Nice to cross that off the list and focus on business.”

Mark going to Palo Alto was a nightmare that just kept getting worse.

“Dude can you like, do something about this,” Dustin said, voice hushed over the phone as Eduardo sat stripped down to his boxers and eating lo mein in the sweatbox that was his New York studio apartment early July. “It’s really not creating a conducive work environment.” 

“Mr. I-Think-Sean-Seems-Kinda-Cool comes down off the fence I see.” 

“Yeah cool for hanging out and helping us connect with other tech startups, not for trying to play fucking house mother Wardo, c’mon. I’m on your side here.” 

“I don’t know what you expect me to do about it from the other coast.” This was not the real problem, but it was one which Eduardo could use as an excuse with Dustin. 

Shaking Divya Narendra and the Winklevosses had definitely been his crowning achievement in steering the company away from danger, but he’d had a hand in at least half a dozen other fixes, from blocking Mark’s phone from accepting calls from Alice Cantwell, to pulling interns who had been acceptable by Mark’s standards, but not by his. 

Sean Parker, however, kept coming back like black mold. Eduardo spent a perhaps unhealthy amount of his daily subway rides across Manhattan wracking his brain for a clean way to extract Sean from that house without incriminating anyone else. 

The problem was not that there was no unpleasantness that Eduardo could have pinned him to, it was that Mark simply did not care. 

(“You don’t have to like him but he brings something really invaluable to the team,” Mark said last time they’d called, buzzing himself up for another all-day coding session. 

“Would you place that invaluable value at more or less than nineteen-thousand dollars?” 

“Ha ha,” Mark had said, and gargled mouthwash in his ear.) 

Eduardo’s beeper vibrated with a new message from Christy. He threw it across the room onto his couch. He knew it wasn’t fair to punish her for the chaos that Sean had wrought. Even if she hadn’t been able to set up that meeting, knowing Sean, he’d still have wormed his way into Mark’s life. “I’m going to be there in a week, I’ll see what I can do.” 

“Godspeed,” Dustin said. Not fast enough by half as it turned out. 

In those strange dreamwalk months, the stretch between Thiel’s angel investment and the dilution, Eduardo saw Divya Narendra exactly once. He was extremely jetlagged at the time, having spent the weekend in California, and for a second Divya Narendra tucked in the corner of a cafe, leafing through a stapled stack of papers with a highlighter poised over the page was just a very odd mirage. 

They had technically never met, though Eduardo knew Divya’s face from his own personal research, a serious business portrait that never quite seemed to match up to the blurry figure who clung to Cameron Winklevoss in the Phoenix video.

(If he was the kind of person who was more honest with himself Eduardo might realize that was because he’d been substituting in his own mental pictures to compensate for the low resolution.) 

Eduardo wondered if Divya would recognize him. Surely he must know what he looked like after the publication he worked for had interviewed and photographed him more than once. Still, they’d never met in person. Eduardo realized too, like thunder following lightning, that he might not be the only person in this room who knew what really happened with Cameron, and he was struck with a not unpleasant jolt of smug satisfaction. 

Sean was still proving to be a pain in the ass, though it stung a little less now that Facebook was funded by something other than the Eduardo Saverin foundation. Still, it infuriated him to no end that Eduardo couldn’t ever admit exactly what he was capable of, the scale of what he’d done for Facebook—for Mark—with none the wiser. It felt good to know that there may be another living soul who knew exactly the depths of what he had done. 

Divya looked up at him then, and Eduardo was rewarded with surprise morphing into pure loathing and contempt. He was so thrilled to see the recognition of what he did—who he _was_ —that it was only later that Eduardo stopped and considered who _really_ would have had the access, ability, and motive to plant the chicken story. 

(Divya knew because of course Divya knew. Cameron had managed to keep it from him through the end of their senior year, into a summer of training and internships and then finally cracking because Divya had called him, voice vibrating excitement from the gate at JFK because he’d ‘managed to squeeze in time to come see your little race.’ 

“And listen, okay, there’s something I want to tell you,” Divya said, “And I’m telling you now because I know you and I know you’re going to need like, seven hours to process this.” 

And Divya said, “No, okay, you go first.” 

And Divya said, “Cam, please just tell me.” 

And Divya listened for a very long time. 

And then Divya said, “I’m going to miss my flight if I don’t go right now, but we are going to _fix this_. Okay?” 

Cameron met him at arrivals at Heathrow, skiving off training, and swallowing back six months of panic and dread until he spotted Divya in the crowd like a good omen. Divya dropped his duffel bag and pulled Cameron into his arms, the crush of anonymity offering a boldness they perhaps should have been wary of, given the circumstances. 

“I love you,” Divya said for the first time aloud into the warm skin of Cameron’s neck. He hadn’t slept on the plane and his eyes were determined, if slightly manic when he pulled away, hands firm against Cameron’s shoulders, and said, “What do you think about getting married?") 

If you had asked him, hypothetically, how Mark would betray him (as if Mark could ever betray him), Eduardo would have sworn by death by a thousand cuts. That Mark’s style after all, with his _it probably was a diversity thing_ and _you should be proud of that right there_ and _I wonder what Erica’s doing right now_. 

But this was _not_ death by a thousand cuts, this was one very big knife, one very big knife shaped exactly like 29.97% in the centre of his fucking chest. 

Eduardo could hear himself shouting, but nothing that came out was what kept running through his mind like a news ticker; _Don’t you know what I did for you!? Don’t you know what I fucking risked for you you ungrateful piece of shit!? Don’t you understand that you would have failed a hundred times over without me!?_

 _Back in the stall_ , he wanted to scream, let Sean and Dustin and all these fucking interns hear, _You know what I did for you. I know you know what I did._

It all stuck to the top of his mouth, and when he could finally swallow it burned all the way down his esophagus, so hot it burned blue. 

He was just getting off his return flight at Logan when he heard the news about Sean’s arrest and he laughed until he gagged. He thought of his special folders on his laptop, his various back-up documents, the paper copies, on Cameron Winklevoss, on Sean Parker, on half a dozen other undesirables who had tried to cross paths with Mark. 

He already knew he wouldn't delete them. 

For the rest of his senior year he was a dead man walking. The Phoenix rallied around him superficially, deleted profiles and murmurs of lukewarm support.

“Did you hear?” Arden said to him, the night before graduation when Eduardo’s only plan was to get spectacularly drunk. 

“Hear what.” 

“About the Winklevoss twins?” 

Eduardo shook his head, which was a bad idea, and he steadied himself against the cool polished wood grain of the wall. He wondered if he would miss this place eventually. He wondered how many of his college lasts he had already experienced without noticing. 

“Him and that guy got fucking _married_ ,” Arden shouted, “I told you something was up with them.” 

“Sorry what?” Eduardo flinched, “Who did what?” 

“One of the twins gay married—that uh, that guy—the reporter?” 

“Divya Narendra?” 

“I guess gays do that ring by spring shit too,” Arden said, and then shouted, “Fuck I gotta piss,” and was swallowed back into the crowd. 

It’s not like Eduardo had really considered releasing that tape ever since Mark had severed him out of the company like a Civil War amputation. But he had kept it, not realizing how buoyed he’d been by the knowledge that he still _could_ until the opportunity had been snatched away from him. 

Of course a journalist would have seen exactly how to defang the story, deflating a secret shame with a public union. He had never ever considered they might actually be in love enough to attempt it. 

He wanted to throw up. He wanted Mark. He wanted another drink. 

He tried to comfort himself with the thought that it would be a short lived marriage, a lengthy divorce battle which would burn them both out and swallow up any lingering urges to go after Facebook. 

In a private room upstairs Eduardo got on his knees for a very pretty brunette with a dimple in her chin, hands cradling the back of his head until she broke apart for him, saying absolutely nothing at all. 

Three years later Eduardo would be ungratified to discover his impulse to protect Mark from the Winklevosses had not diminished with time. Divya was officially one of them now, on record as “Divya Narendra Winklevoss, D-I-V-Y-A Space N-A-R-E-N-D-A, and my last name is the same as my husband’s.” 

Not exactly the picture of marital anguish he’d been comforting himself with since Arden had dropped the news on him pre-graduation. 

He spent the rest of the afternoon in a dizzy haze feeling stupid that even now he was trying to clean up Mark’s messes, even those which were beneficial to him. What did he care if Mark paid out to the Winklevosses? Gretchen had grilled into him all afternoon over overly-complex salads that Mark losing this lawsuit would only strengthen his own case against him. 

Stubbornly, Eduardo’s only real explanation for his behaviour was that he still didn’t feel that they had earned the right to. He had put in the time, he had been willing to break the law to protect what he and Mark had built together, what the hell had they ever accomplished? 

Eduardo knew they were all staying at the same hotel, having bumped into Tyler in the bar the night before, but even still he was unsettled to walk into the elevator from the lobby only to be met with Divya and Cameron in bathing suits and bathrobes, still reeking of chlorine from the pool on the lower level. 

“Hello,” Eduardo said. 

“Good evening,” Cameron said, and Divya moved himself between them. The world’s most ineffective human shield. 

Eduardo turned and rolled his eyes, but he could tell in the hazy mirror of the elevator door that Divya was glaring at him. 

“Interesting choices today,” Divya said. 

“I’m not really supposed to be talking to you without a lawyer present.” 

“That’s good advice, is that what she said when you told her you tried to blackmail us?” Divya said, “Or did you decide not to tell her about that part.” 

Eduardo didn’t say anything, which felt as good as admitting he hadn’t. He didn’t think Gretchen would care, anything was fixable, but he could imagine the tight-lipped face she would have made and the strategy sessions he would have been dragged into. 

“Well, either way, Zuckerberg’s lawyers are already sending us settlement packages,” Divya said, and Eduardo watched him shrug in the reflection, and then say to Cameron, “God, doesn’t it remind you of—” 

“When, we signed our prenup? Yeah, a bit,” Cameron said, voice low and gravelly, like he was telling a secret. 

“God, and then we fucked on the table right after? Do you remember?” Eduardo watched in the reflection on the door as Divya slipped his hand into Cameron’s stark white hotel robe and started palming him. 

Cameron keened in his throat, wide-eyed when Eduardo whirled around, but Divya waved a dismissive hand at him, “Oh I’m sorry are you opposed to watching us suddenly? Is this a violation of your privacy? Fuck right off.” 

“Baby…” Cameron said, half-admonishment, half-plea, his head hitting the back of the elevator with a dull thud. “God, _fuck_.”

 _“You’re taking that so good, yeah you love it don’t you?”_ Eduardo thought deliriously and turned back around as he waited for the elevator to creep it’s way up to his floor. 

He tried to keep quiet his bitter disappointment that behind him and to his left, neither of them sounded anything like Mark. 

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thank you to evol_love for the very short beta job turn around and to youshallnotfinditso who was an invaluable collaborator during the creation of this fic. Also thank you to the TPN mods for organizing this great challenge. 
> 
> I was also very much inspired by the phenomenal Like tired kites by romeinruins which is an absolute must read if you haven't already. 
> 
> Find me on tumblr where I'm also phonecallfromgod.


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